


But Not Yet

by madame_faust



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Extramarital Affairs, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27249832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: Philippe was not a pious man, but there was one prayer he might ardently whisper upon bended knee. The famous words of St. Augustine of Hippo, "God, grant me chastity and continence. But not yet."
Relationships: Comte Philippe de Chagny/La Sorelli
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9





	But Not Yet

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little character study of Philippe!

Marriage loomed ahead of Philippe as an eventuality and inevitability. No mater his personal tastes, accomplishments, patronages, and pleasures, he knew from a young age that he had only one purpose in this life. To marry well. Produce an heir. And carry on the family name with all due dignity. 

His father, Comte Philibert, had done so; two living sons and daughters, each of them genteel and handsome, a credit to their name. The Comte himself had been a kind man, dignified and discreet. He kept to his study, was a patron of the arts and sciences, once a month he would venture out to his club, but he was not a man of vice. He neither gambled nor drank. He appeared at Church every Sunday with his wife and children. They were properly brought up and cared for. He neither raised a hand to the children nor his voice to his wife. By all accounts, it appeared to be a harmonious household.

From the outside. His father was dignified. And discreet in his personal habits. Hardly an unfeeling man, it would have wounded him to know that he caused pain to anyone about whom he cared. But his wife, the Comtesse, she had her own dignity to preserve. Comte Philibert had no reason to know how grieved he was when he, as any gentleman might, sought the pleasure of another woman to warm his bed at nights. When her husband was home she treated him affectionately, taking his arm in public and kissing his cheek before retiring. 

Privately she grieved. Poured out her misery to her eldest son when he was small, held him upon her lap and wept into his golden curls. When he was older, he would hand her handkerchiefs under the door in her boudoir, listening to her gasping sighs through the door. 

_"Promise me,"_ she would grip his hand and whisper urgently with her red eyes. _"That you will never use a woman so. You see how miserable men make their wives. Promise me you will never be such a man, my little Philippe."_

When he was a boy, he promised. Swore to her that he when he married, he would be dutiful to his wife. That he would not abandon her for another. Such things were easy to promise when he was a boy, more devoted to sport than sporting and when his mother's tired, knowing eyes locked with his across the supper table.

But when he was on the cusp of manhood, his mother was gone. And all those chivalrous vows of chastity and virtue proved harder to maintain. Especially when his father paid for his education - quite a different sort of education - in matters of the heart and body than had been availed to him in all his years of schooling at home. 

Philippe was a devoted lover of women. Their bodies, their smiles, the feeling of their hair in his hands, their fingertips and mouths upon him were the source of the keenest pleasure he had ever known. The coupling of two forms, simple, primal, but _wonderful_ allowed him to forget his family's mourning, the responsibility assumed by an heir and, eventually, pseudo-father to the young boy whose coming into the world had taken their mother from this world. 

It was easy enough when he was twenty to eschew the notion of marriage. He was so young. Raoul was still in short pants and wanted the attentions of a father; it would be cruel indeed to take a wife and therefore allow his children to usurp his brother's place in the house. Better to wait. 

Ah, but it was not a selfless devotion to family that drove him. Not when there was such a variety of womanhood before him, not merely in Paris, but Italy, England, Monte Carlo. He was there for the Salle Garnier was inaugerated by La Bernhardt herself, dressed as a nymph. Raoul had just gone for officer's training and Philippe could no longer pretend his younger brother required his constant guardianship. A wife, then, seemed inevitable and he was approached by every silver-haired matron and doe-eyed coquette the noblesse had to offer, each seemingly auditioning for the role of Comtesse de Chagny.

They played their parts prettily enough, but he found them all a bore; too young, too unworldly. That was what he was meant to want. An angel of the household to oversee the day-to-day running of the estate, birth healthy sons and pretty daughters, be a charming host, and devote what time remained to her to charity. 

But when he found himself eyeing a girl he thought he might find tolerable enough to wed, his mother's wet eyes and heartfelt weeping returned to him. 

_Promise me you will never be such a man._

He would wait, he told himself resolutely, until he was forty. Then he would set himself quite seriously upon finding himself a wife. There was time yet to perform his duty; their father had been nearly fifty when Raoul was born. It could wait.

The Opera managers at the Palais in Paris threw quite the little fete for his birthday. Chief among his presents was a dark-haired, dark-eyed Italian girl from the ballet corps. And just like that all his careful plans evaporated like water in the desert. 

La Sorelli. Was ever a figure so fine, a wit so quick, a humor so well-matched to his own? He could lose himself in her for hours, not merely the workings of her body, but in conversation, and private rhapsodies over her beautiful brown eyes. He became quite the reformed man, did Philippe. He eschewed other paramours and even set the ballerina up in a charming little flat that he might come to her as he liked which was more often than he should. 

Forty past. Then forty-one. At forty-two they both celebrated with a champagne toast and night of love at her ascendance to the role of prima ballerina at the Opera. And still he did not marry. 

Other women, especially those to whom he might look for as a suitable wife, seemed especially dim and dull, utterly eclipsed by the light of his beautiful dancing girl. He was besotted in a manner in which he severely scolded his brother when Raoul returned from the sea and set his cap at that mousy, sad-eyed chorus girl.

It was inappropriate, he chided. There were other women. Raoul was young and handsome, he might have his pick of any of them. But the more he insisted that this girl, this Christine was the _one_ , the more Philippe became irate.

It was not right. Not _natural_ for a man to be so constant. It was a lingering childishness and the interference of their sisters, he concluded, that led to such ridiculous fancies in a man of Raoul's age. Best to throw them of and conduct himself in a manner more becoming his years and rank. 

A hypocrite? Yes, he was, rather. But Philippe never claimed to be a saint. And even the saints had their sinful tendencies.

At night, when he lost himself to the beauty and charms of his ballerina, he could shunt all that aside, his frustration with Raoul, the ever-looming threat of his own marriage, the love he felt but never spoke of to the girl sleeping at his side. He might even pray about it the next time he took himself to Mass.

_God, grant me chastity and continence. But not yet._


End file.
